About the Freedom Box and/or "free as in freedom" email

Eben Moglen of the Software Freedom Law Center talks about how there should be alternatives to ceding our rights and freedoms for "free" services -- and how free, open-source software can attack this problem with cheap hardware in the new Freedom Box project. I'm still absorbing all of this and turning it over in my head, and I'll have more to say when that process is further along...

"[using self hosted or ISP-provided webmail] I can tap into the relative ubiquity of web-based e-mail services such as Gmail, Yahoo Mail, AOL Mail, etc., that you can get from any web browser yet not be subjected to the advertising, spying and general lack of control inherent in those "free" (but not free) services... Can you tell I'm falling under the influence of EbenMoglen?"

Since I already went through the same process last year and have already thought a lot about it, since it is (I hope) useful for everybody, and since I do want as much feedback and general discussion as possible around this, I repost here the comment I wrote to Rosenberg's first post:

Steven,

reading in this and your other post (the one about Roundcube as a webmail interface) that you are "falling under the influence of E. Moglen", that is thinking around free as in freedom email services, I think that you may be interested in what I wrote about "Virtual Personal Email Servers". I look forward to hear your opinion about this.